FTL: Faster Than Light

BizzyC

Damn you all!!
I could have happily lived my life without knowing this game existed...


What's the best way to deal with boardings?
I keep getting my ass kicked by them when there's more than 2.

Venting 02 helps, but is a dangerous tactic, especialy when you lose door control and end up sending your men to their death trying to repair it so you can sort out 02 supply....

seamus

Screw repairing the door control until the battle is over, then gather your men in the medbay and have them dash forward and back between the medbay and door control, repairing it. Try to have at least two guys in there fixing it, it'll be done in no time. Once you have one bar back, you can hit close all doors to close the outside doors, then open all doors to open just the inside doors and equalise the oxygen throughout the ship.

VinLieger

BizzyC wrote: »

Damn you all!!
I could have happily lived my life without knowing this game existed...


What's the best way to deal with boardings?
I keep getting my ass kicked by them when there's more than 2.

Venting 02 helps, but is a dangerous tactic, especialy when you lose door control and end up sending your men to their death trying to repair it so you can sort out 02 supply....

Best tactic is opening doors to vent oxygen and forcing the enemy to the med centre which still has oxygen where you can fight them and heal at the same time

BizzyC

Ah yes, but what do you do when the med bay is also out of oxygen...

Burgo

BizzyC wrote: »

Damn you all!!
I could have happily lived my life without knowing this game existed...


What's the best way to deal with boardings?
I keep getting my ass kicked by them when there's more than 2.

Venting 02 helps, but is a dangerous tactic, especialy when you lose door control and end up sending your men to their death trying to repair it so you can sort out 02 supply....

invest in level 3 doors, slows down boarders immeasurably, and usually gives plenty of time to vent them into space!

seamus

BizzyC wrote: »

Ah yes, but what do you do when the med bay is also out of oxygen...

You should never let this happen
In the unlikely event they they teleport into the medbay, don't drain the oxygen from there. They will probably leave it alone, so wait until they get out, then close the medbay door and drain the oxygen from where they are.

You need level 2 doors at an absolute minimum to stop boarders from roaming free through your ship. As soon as they board, pause it and move everyone into the medbay except for the pilot. Only open the minimum amount of doors needed to drain the O2 from where the boarders are, make sure all other doors are closed.
The boarders will usually first go for your sensors and doors, sometimes your weapons, but usually once the sensors and door control are gone, they will try to get to your crew. With them safely encased on the medbay, if the boarders do break in, they will be weakened from the lack of O2 and your guys will be continually regenerated while they fight in the medbay.

The reason you leave a guy in the pilot seat is to ensure that your FTL drive is generating. If you're really taking a hammering, you can jump back to a safe location and fight the boarders without worrying about their ship. Sometimes the pilot might have to be martyred for the sake of having a fully recovered engine.

BizzyC

The last time they got me it was a mix of people and combat drones...

I vented to kill the men, but they took out door control and a missile hit my med bay and took that out.
I ended up with 3 near-death crew, 02-less broken med bay and no door control...

Furthest I've gotten so far is to stage 8.
I've restarted in stage 1 though, got a very unlucky one last night where I was out-gunned twice in my first few jumps.

Grimebox

I've had no problems with boarders since I usually have at least two of my crew trained in fighting to board their ship. I have been using the Torus as well which heals your guys no matter where they are on the ship.

Is there any point in upgrading the Oxygen generator?

marshbaboon

Grimebox wrote: »

I've had no problems with boarders since I usually have at least two of my crew trained in fighting to board their ship. I have been using the Torus as well which heals your guys no matter where they are on the ship.

Is there any point in upgrading the Oxygen generator?

I haven't upgraded it once. If you upgrade it far enough you can stop sections depressuring from hull breaches... I think... even then you can just pop the doors and repair it with 2 people.

The o2 comes back so fast with the default generator there seems to be no point.

seraphimvc

lol at some posts above. This game is so good indeed!

if you do zoltan you need to make door and 02 upgrades in later sector because one invasion of mentis or rockmen is instant game over Q_Q

the 02 upgrade is needed for when everywhere is on fire+invasion, you just vent them to medic bay and fight them there or they will just suffocate before they kill the upgraded door.

Nichololas

BizzyC wrote: »

What's the best way to deal with boardings?
I keep getting my ass kicked by them when there's more than 2.

Venting 02 helps, but is a dangerous tactic, especialy when you lose door control and end up sending your men to their death trying to repair it so you can sort out 02 supply....

Keep all rooms you're not immediately using vented.

Upgrade doors.

When boarders arrive, they'll usually go for the medbay once they start hurting from suffocation, so close all doors between them and it closed to slow them down and open all doors behind them to vent o2.

If you can, try and keep someone close to the o2 room to repair it quickly if it gets damaged by ship fire.

----

And never restart! The best (most fun) game I had was with one solitary dude who managed to survive three sectors by himself. Had enough firepower to take down most ships quickly, and kept the entire ship vented except for the pilot deck to deal with boarders and fires. Of course, it can take a while to repair all damage after each encounter, especially if doors or o2 are damaged. I think what finally got me was simultaneous damage to o2, doors and weapons, and I even took out the ship attacking me but the poor pilot was left by himself in the medbay, stuck in limbo on ~5hp with no o2.

Kiith

Gah! Had the mothership down to about 5% on the last stage, and got hit with a missile salvo that killed me! So bloody close!

pixelburp

Jaysus - how on earth do you defeat the second stage of the flagship battle? I usually beat the first stage without too much hassle (the left side of the ship breaks away after focusing on downing its shields), then in the 2nd battle I get hammered by a flood of drones, constant boarding drones & about 3/4 missile attacks - usually at the same time. Plus, this is on Easy: any tips?

marshbaboon

pixelburp wrote: »

Jaysus - how on earth do you defeat the second stage of the flagship battle? I usually beat the first stage without too much hassle (the left side of the ship breaks away after focusing on downing its shields), then in the 2nd battle I get hammered by a flood of drones, constant boarding drones & about 3/4 missile attacks - usually at the same time. Plus, this is on Easy: any tips?

boarding parties can take out the separate weapon systems. Take out the missiles and ions first. Cloak to avoid the drone swarm.

Kiith

I just managed to tank it for the most part. Stupidly didn't take out the missile launcher though, which is what killed me. One thing to note, is that if you can kill the crew manning the weapons in the 1st stage, that they will still be dead in the 2nd/3rd stage.

ED E

Kiith wrote: »

I just managed to tank it for the most part. Stupidly didn't take out the missile launcher though, which is what killed me. One thing to note, is that if you can kill the crew manning the weapons in the 1st stage, that they will still be dead in the 2nd/3rd stage.

Yes, except the guy on the far right, if you kill him the ship can go autopilot and repair itself, so kill everyone but him.

norrie rugger

Kiith wrote: »

I think it's a lot down to luck. Had a few runs last night, and when i managed to find a few extra crew members, and a decent weapon/drone, then it wasn't too bad. But i got to stage 4 with only 2 crew members and no decent drops. Got easily killed. The last stage is a total bitch though. Was doing really well up to then, and was getting hammered during the last stage.

It's a great game, if a little short. Would be nice for some variations on the events that can occur too. For less then a tenner, it's great though.

I am not liking how so much of it is based around luck.
I will play through, until my little ship explodes but, far too often, the options to get a crew member/weapon just do not appear. Worse is when the very first system that I travel to has all the high rank weapons and I can never get enough cash together, in that system, to go back.

It is a great little game but I feel that when such a large part of the completion rests on luck is bad development

BizzyC

Had a good run last night, have my kestrel near the end of the 2nd last sector, ready to take on the flagship...

All power upgrades done, sheilds to full, 2 burst lasers, 1 missile, 1 hull cannon, 2 defense drones, upgraded 02 and doors and 8 crew...

What's the best way to approach the last stage? I haven't had a ship this strong going into it before.

Zulu

Finally killed the mothership last night (on easy)!

What i did was:
autofire ion cannon at their shields
cloak when they fire missles
beam down to one weapon room
focus all autofire at other weapon room
beam team off/back on until all weapons are dead.

Note: lost my away team when it jumped the second time

pixelburp

Zulu wrote: »

[...]

Note: lost my away team when it jumped the second time

There's a third stage in that fight??

Zulu

yup, 3 & final!

Grimebox

Their ship seems to get stronger when it loses parts of its ship, mine gets a whole lot worse

Canis Lupus

Just sat down at 7 thinking I'll give a quick whirl, it's now 11. Lul wut? Great little doohickey of a game.

BizzyC

Lost with my strong ship....

Didn't get killed, but the ship took out the base before i could destroy it.

norrie rugger

Finally beat you, ya little bastard

Canis Lupus

norrie rugger wrote: »

Finally beat you, ya little bastard

I beat the game on easy. It was straightforward but I reckon I got lucky? Engi ship A, Ion II and ion I. I got a firebeam towards the end along with a cloak. Offense was an anti ship drone.

Relatively straightforward, knock out shields with ion, firebeam whatever, repeat, just cloak when you need to. I was expecting something impossible. I imagine normal would be more of a challenge.

norrie rugger

Ion bomb did it for me.
Combined with blast laser 1 and 2 with pegasus missiles.
Anti ship 2 and defense 2

pixelburp

Finally; after many attempts I manage to destroy the flagship. On Easy :eek: Satisfying in the end to get there though.

For the first fight, I used bombs & the bio-beam to kill off the entire crew, so after that I simply targeted systems (specifically missiles & drone control, but that's gone by the 3rd wave). Cloaking definitely helps avoid the heavier attacks, and with the flagship crewless the third fight was pretty easy - much of the flagship was on fire by the time it exploded.

Phew!

Kiith

Some mods show in PcGamer today. Looks pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9KHXN-Jis

Kiith

Gonna bump this, as they just announced FTL Advanced, a free update due out early next year. Also going to be released on the iPad (no word on Android unfortunately).

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11/11/ftl-advanced-edition-adds-new-weapons-content-for-free-in-2014/